I have no strong feelings to putting either Tromsø or Bodø on the map, but I think we need to have some kind of consistency when adding ports. If you add ports like Vaasa, Oulu and Luleå then I think it's not wrong to add ports like Tromsø and/or Bodø. I guess there was more action along the Norwegian coast than in the Gulf of Bothnia. If I remember correctly the German battleship of Tirpitz was sunk close to Tromsø hiding in the fjord there.

I wanted to add that Vaasa, Oulu and Luleå were put on the map by the original ADG designers, that is Harry Rowland, so if they are on the WiF FE map, they should be on the MWiF map. For Norway, they choose to add only Trondheim and Narvik, that's why we only have Trondheim and Narvik on the MWiF map.

About Tromsø or Bodø or Kirkenes, we should add those that would allow to recreate the situation of the WiF FE Scandinavia minimap, but not those who would change it too much. For me Kirkenes changes the situation too much, as it gives a starting point to reconquer Petsamo, or a support point to defend it, that doesn't exist in WiF FE. Tromsø or Bodø add wuite nothing nor do they change nothing. Bodø fills part of the supply hole that a unit walking from Trondheim to Narvik would encounter, but these are coastal hexes, so if the unit is in supply from the port of Trondehim, walking north it will stay in supply if it stay on the coast. Tromsø fills part of the supply hole there is in northern Norway, but not enough to support Petsamo, which is good and does not change the game. My vote are Bodø NO, and Tromsø YES as you said that Tromsø was the largest city in northern Norway.

About the Clear hex east of the lake, that was proposed to be turned into a mountain :

quote:

I've been all across Norway at work (including Røros) and I know that the terrain here is not very army friendly. It's a 2MP hex (not a 1MP hex).

What about making it Forest ? It is 1 MP for leg units, but 2 MP for motorized units. And Blitz Breakthrough are impossible. Blitz attacks are possible, but not Breakthrough.

Or it can also be made Tundra (2 MP for leg, 3 MP for MOT), but combat is normal.

Well forest is maybe the best compromise, isn't it ?

I agree with you about that. Forest is a good compromise because this hex contains both forest, mountain and tundra terrain.

I also start thinking about the clear terrain hex in the far northern part of Norway. I don't think that hex in Finnmark (close to Kautokeino) is terrain suitable for armor breakthroughs. It's quite flat, but has Arctic climate so it's not a farmland. It's very very cold there during the Winters so it can be partly a tundra hex. But it has some vegetation and the Sami people have lots of raindeer it the inland hexes in far north of Norway (those forest hexes and the one clear hex). So I wonder if all hexes should be forest. Some of them probably deserve to be marsh hexes, but I can't tell which is which. All I know is that Finnmarksvidda (all these hexes) are notorious of its big and aggressive mosquitos. They hatch in marshes.

So I can go with any terrain for this hex EXCEPT the current clear hex. This Arctic terrain is definitely not tank terrain. The temperatures can often go as low as -40 and sometimes as low as -50 there during the Winter. Sometimes even the Røros hex can be that cold during the Winter. Røros is the coldest town (except tiny mountain villages) of southern Norway. But I don't think the terrains in Finnmarksvidda and Røros have permafrost (an indicator of tundra). It's often quite hot at summertime on the Finnmarksvidda. Often above +20 degrees and sometimes almost as high as +30 degrees. So maybe forest hexes is the best depiction of it's terrain for MWIF purposes. It gives leg units 1MP terrain cost and only armor units 2MP terrain cost. It's also fine it prevents armor breakthrough attacks because this is definitely not ideal armor terrain like the Ukrainian grasslands.

By the way, I still have relatives in the Malmo area. In fact, a couple of my cousins from New Jersey are presently on vacation visiting the old ancestral home in Vitemule (spelling?). I was there once and listened to its "singing sands".

During the latter part of the 20th century the government became more dominated by the finnish people and the finnishification(?) increased in strength this is why the Finnish version of the names are more common in modern maps.

This lead the Swedish-heritage minority to march on the capital with placards saying "Finish Finnishification!".

Except they weren't in English, so it wasn't as funny. And it didn't actually happen.

Svartisen: I am fine with what Borger said about keeping it there but changing how the coastline is drawn. (I can go for moving the ice one hex directly east, if anyone think that’s better?) About hex (34,39) –Røros Nice pictures Borger. I think I understand Borger pretty well. I think every Norwegian have the notion that Røros is a mountain area. So I do see the point in changing it just to go with popular belief. I do have another point though: The most important thing about terrain is the movement cost. As Borger already pointet out there was really another Norwegian railroad further to the east that was even older than the one drawn on the WIF map. And why was this other railroad made first? Because it was shorter and easier to go over Røros than where the later main railroad was going. (It’s somewhat like that today also, the main road goes where the railroad is on the map, but the shorter road in both km and hours goes further east.) So my point is, I don’t want Røros as a mountain because it should cost less movement points going there than further west. (Remember we have currently all said yes to turn hex (35,37) into forest so we are reducing movement cost on the western route.)

I don’t know what my conclusion is. I don’t want to press to hard either.... Maybe Patrice’s middle way approach of a forest hex is most fitting? I know see that Borger already made a vote for Forest. So I’ll go for that too then.

(I don’t know why Rørosbanen ain’t on the map. A possible reason is that it had a different gauge width than the rest of the railroad when the war started, but the works to change the cauge to standard was completed in 41.)

I will now propose making the resource hex of Norway a mountain hex. As Borger said some of the hex in the west is likely to be clear. But what is important when deciding the terrain? -Possibly defending the resource? The resource is in my view representing the heavy water factory which was a rare commodity. The heavy water factory was in the mountains. The resource may also represent some mineral mines in the area. (Titanium I believe? important for aircraft _ but that may not have been exploited until after the war.) In any case defence of the resource would be in mountain. -Secondly movement. If moving from Kristiansand to Stavanger you have to move through some serious rough terrain which will slow both infantry and motorized severely. There are no other movement directions worth considering.

I had a look at Google Earth of the area. Google earth doesn’t have much detail in the area though. But you can get a 3d view if you turn on terrain.

I will also suggest making hex (40,34) a sea hex (hex dot). Reason is the following google earth picture.

Due to Patrice's clarification that he thinks it really is ok to change features of Scandinavia on the European WIF map, I update my vote. I only bold face those votes that are changed from the last time.

Name of modification : Gothenburg (41,38) (lomyrin) 5 Voters, YES : 100 % / NO : 0 % City, Minor Port / Sweden Modification to make / Reason : it is one of the largest ports in Sweden and the main Swedish West Coast port - definitely a major port. No -> Yes

Why is the 'Boden-hex' not a fortified hex? In the first half of the 20th century, Bodens fästning "The northern lock" was a effective Fortress. With a system of forts encircling 25 km with the city of Boden inside it. It contains roughly of 5 heavy artillery forts supported by flanking batteries and several infantry housing/storage forts some 1200 structures all in all. This supported by a garrison several mobile artillery divisions and infantry totalling about 15 000 men during the war. Built to protect the port of Luleå and the railway lines intersecting in Boden. So I'd would suggest that this fortress that might have been the strongest in northen europe (without a doubt the strongest in scandinavia) at the time warrants an all around fortress hex.

The bit I've highlighted in bold might be a counter argument to having fortifications all around this hex. If the hex has an area of 2500km, then the fort described above is of about 200 square km (if my back-of-the-envelope calculation is correctish), or 8% of the hex's area.

Also, are any of the fortifications in Boden along a hex boundary? I guess typically they are in the case of the Maginot etc, hence the difficulty of attacking into the hex. If not, then perhaps that hexside shouldn't be fortified.

ORIGINAL: Froonp Well, why not after all. Chances are high that Boden sees as much action in the game as in reality, so why not add an all around fortification.

But Toed, comparing Boden Fortifications to the Maginot Line, of the fortifications of Sebastopol, or the Fortifications of Singapore, are you really really sure that Boden would deserve the same fortifications ? Please note that the Siegfried line is not represented on the WiF FE map, not at all, so are you still sure about Boden ? Patrice

Yes and No. It is smaller in size than the Maginot, more all around than Singapore and far less proven than Sevastopol. Surely if compairing those famous forts with eachother one would not really find many similarities either. But I can in sense compare it to The Maginot line. The Maginot forced the Germans to bypass it. To my knowledge there was two major issues that saved Sweden from German attack during the war: 1. Apeacement - Germany got to buy all the iron ore they wanted and cheaply. After Finland entered the war on the Axis side Sweden even allowed limited troop transports through our territory (in retropect not our finest moment). 2. Boden Fortress - The German armys plans for taking Sweden concluded that taking Sweden was possible but that reducing Boden took far more time and resources than what was prudent to expend so far north and, as any WiF player knows, that the Kiruna-Gällivare/Malmberget ore fields is the price in Sweden. So one comparison I can make is that it, as the Maginot, had strategic impact and not only local tactical impact like the Eben Emanuel for example. But, of course, in most senses it was vastly diffrent from the existing on-map fortifications.

I could go on with other arguments. But the WiF question might be. Would it have had a major impact on any major battles in the area with forces large enough to warrant notice in a corps/army size game? I think so. No attacking army would have been able to successfully cross the Luleå älv (Luleå river) within that hex and would have had serious problems using the port of Luleå before reducing the Fortress area and its garrison. This is not considering additional Swedish reinforcements to the area.

The bit I've highlighted in bold might be a counter argument to having fortifications all around this hex. If the hex has an area of 2500km, then the fort described above is of about 200 square km (if my back-of-the-envelope calculation is correctish), or 8% of the hex's area.

Also, are any of the fortifications in Boden along a hex boundary? I guess typically they are in the case of the Maginot etc, hence the difficulty of attacking into the hex. If not, then perhaps that hexside shouldn't be fortified.

Cheers, Neilster

With that argument I guess removing Sevastopol and Singapore is invalid too since they are smaller than the actual hex. No one would do that because, for example, the one thing to control in the Singapore hex is infact Singapore and its harbour. Same thing applies here to control and be able to manouver in the 'Boden' hex you need to control the Fortress. The railway lines intersected (still do) in Boden not in Luleå and the large bridges over river back then was inside the Fortress. I would guess that you'd pause at doing an cross river assault without at least containing the forces inside the Fortress and moving your army further away leaving your supply lines open for the garrison to destroy would not be prudent.

I will now propose making the resource hex of Norway a mountain hex. As Borger said some of the hex in the west is likely to be clear. But what is important when deciding the terrain? -Possibly defending the resource? The resource is in my view representing the heavy water factory which was a rare commodity. The heavy water factory was in the mountains. The resource may also represent some mineral mines in the area. (Titanium I believe? important for aircraft _ but that may not have been exploited until after the war.) In any case defence of the resource would be in mountain. -Secondly movement. If moving from Kristiansand to Stavanger you have to move through some serious rough terrain which will slow both infantry and motorized severely. There are no other movement directions worth considering.

I agree with you on this and won't mind if this hex is changed from clear to mountain. I this represents the area between Egersund and Flekkefjord, i. e. Åna-Sira etc. I have driven a car in this territory and it's definitely NOT armor terrain. So I would say that most of the hex is mountains and the smaller part of the hex is clear.

I also agree that Røros can be a forest hex. It won't hamper movement except for armored units.

What do you think about the clear hex in western Finnmark on the MWIF map today? Thsi is near Kautokeino. Do you think it warrants to be a clear hex? I think it's closer to a forest hex because it's not well suited for armor units and I haven't heard of nice farmlands near Kautokeino. The vegetation is sparse even though terrain is quite flat. I also believe Finnmarksvidda has some marshy terrain too, but I don't know if it's enough to make the entire hex marsh. So I think the main thing is to make some kind of terrain in the hex that would be suitable for movement of leg and armor units. I believe leg units won't be hampered by the terrain near Kautokeino, but armored units would. Therefore is a forest terrain a good way to implement this. Agree?

I will now propose making the resource hex of Norway a mountain hex. As Borger said some of the hex in the west is likely to be clear. But what is important when deciding the terrain? -Possibly defending the resource? The resource is in my view representing the heavy water factory which was a rare commodity. The heavy water factory was in the mountains. The resource may also represent some mineral mines in the area. (Titanium I believe? important for aircraft _ but that may not have been exploited until after the war.) In any case defence of the resource would be in mountain. -Secondly movement. If moving from Kristiansand to Stavanger you have to move through some serious rough terrain which will slow both infantry and motorized severely. There are no other movement directions worth considering.

I had a look at Google Earth of the area. Google earth doesn’t have much detail in the area though. But you can get a 3d view if you turn on terrain.

I will also suggest making hex (40,34) a sea hex (hex dot). Reason is the following google earth picture.

This change (resource hex turned into a mountain) for me is a too big change. Real Geography may warrant it, but this time WiF FE play will get changed as this hex is sometimes jumped onto by the Allies. I prefer to keep it as is.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets By the way, I still have relatives in the Malmo area. In fact, a couple of my cousins from New Jersey are presently on vacation visiting the old ancestral home in Vitemule (spelling?). I was there once and listened to its "singing sands".

I told you not to take the blue pills with the red pills.

Cheers, Neilster

Oh, mixing the blue and red pills causes no problems, but if I then add the white tablets I break out in a patriotic ferver.

The sand in Vitemoula (spelling?) is of a strange granularity. If you scuff your feet while walking along the dry sand, kicking streams of sand along in front of you, the sand on sand interaction produces a whistling sound. Hence the term singing sands.

I also saw black sand on the southern part of the island of Hawaii (a.k.a., Big Island). Solid black sand, somewhat course, making up an entire beach. It's volcanic rock, in the form of very small pebbles, that haven't yet been broken up by the wind and waves into 'normal' sand. That beach has since been mostly (perhaps completely?) destroyed by more recent lava flows.

Here are the data about the votes about the mods to make to Scandinavia map.

Some of them saw 5-7 persons voting, and get 100% YES. I propose that these get done, and that further discussion goes on for the others. They are : Gothenburg, Vänern, Vättern, Railroad Gothenburg-Stockholm, Iron ore of Gällivare & Kiruna 1, Strait from Copenhagen to Malmo, Strait from Helsingor (NW Copenhagen) to Helsingborg, Coast south of Vaasa 2, Mountain hex (35,37) and Sognefjord.

If no more discussions happen, I propose to accept all the mods that had 75% or more YES.

I also start thinking about the clear terrain hex in the far northern part of Norway. I don't think that hex in Finnmark (close to Kautokeino) is terrain suitable for armor breakthroughs.

I would make it forest.

I wont make any argument about this. If you think this is good. Then fine. (I have never been there so I wouldn't really now.)

Yes Patrice. I think it's a good thing to accept all that's more than 75% yes, with not to few votes, at this moment. The list is long enough already. It's nice that we get this going.

About my two suggestions. It was two not just one. Changing a hex to sea was the other one. Patrice didn't comment on that one? (And by the way, the thing about the mountain hex. Does your comment mean it's vetoed?)

I am not sure if you have all my votes correct since they were spread out over several posts, so here is an update (in the order you last showed the list). Where I write "no opinion", it means that I am not casting a vote yea or nay.

Repeated here are the 3 places where I qualified my vote with comments: 1 - Tampere (35,47) (Borger) Yes, it seems incorrect that all the Finnish units have to arrive in Helsinki 2 - Boden Fortified (27,46) (Toed) - 6 fortification hexsides with benefit of ½, not 1/3 3 - Turku (37,46) (Borger) Yes, but as minor port not as a city

[ The sand in Vitemoula (spelling?) is of a strange granularity. If you scuff your feet while walking along the dry sand, kicking streams of sand along in front of you, the sand on sand interaction produces a whistling sound. Hence the term singing sands.

I also saw black sand on the southern part of the island of Hawaii (a.k.a., Big Island). Solid black sand, somewhat course, making up an entire beach. It's volcanic rock, in the form of very small pebbles, that haven't yet been broken up by the wind and waves into 'normal' sand. That beach has since been mostly (perhaps completely?) destroyed by more recent lava flows.

And by the way, the thing about the mountain hex. Does your comment mean it's vetoed?

No, it's not, I've got no more rights than you to veto something. For me, only Steve has these rights. I was just expressing that I voted NO to this. I've got the privilege to be able to cast a vote immediately when a new suggestion is made, I was doing that. In message #79 I included :

And by the way, the thing about the mountain hex. Does your comment mean it's vetoed?

No, it's not, I've got no more rights than you to veto something. For me, only Steve has these rights. I was just expressing that I voted NO to this. I've got the privilege to be able to cast a vote immediately when a new suggestion is made, I was doing that. In message #79 I included :

About this hex I have no strong feelings. I can easily live with it being a clear hex and one benefit of this is that the Germans need to be careful about a British invasion near Stavanger to capture the resource. When the resource is in clear terrain it's not so well defended and the German will need to garrison Stavanger and the resource.

Remember that Germany had as many as 400.000 soldier at the most garrisoned in Norway (most in the north fighting Russians), but also quite a lot in the south.

I travelled through the Jæren grasslands SW of Stavanger and remember that even today we can see all the German anti-invasion obstacles they put in the shoreline. Many of them designed to prevent armor from entering. It shows that the Germans were very very concerned about an invasion taking place here. I remember from my work in the military, where the Norwegian army were evaluating the different terrain along the Norwegian coast about its suitability for invasion. This was done in case of a Soviet invasion of Norway so the NATO Allies would know where to counter invade to liberate Norway. I know that the Jæren grasslands were pretty high on the list for suitable counter invasion areas.

So I'm changing my vote for this hex to NO. After listening to the good arguments against it from Froonp.

I believe we can find lots of hexes on the MWIF with different terrain types inside them in the real world. And we can only choose ONE terrain for the MWIF map. So we have to make compromises from time to time. And I believe in such situations that how we want the game play to work should supercede accuracy. Therefore Froonp's argument of keeping the Norwegian resource a clear hex instead of the more correct Mountain (or forest) is in my opinion a good one. We can easily live with the hex being clear and it's not that wrong.

I also agree with Froonp's argument about having 75% YES to implement a change. I would say with one exception. That is if we have 3 votes only. Then a 66% YES should be enough for implementing the change.

I also agree that changes with 100% YES who have received 4+ votes are taken away from the list and implemented. That means that the list is shorter and easier for the rest to read through. I also believe we can take out from the list some propositions where there are alternatives and it seems one alternative is getting all the YES votes and the other all the NO votes.

Therefore I propose to remove from the list the following suggestions:

I have also suggested to change it to forest and this suggestion gets all the yes votes. So I withdraw the suggestion of making it mountain.

quote:

Coast south of Vaasa 1a (33,45) (Borger) : Become land hex with most of the hex being sea. 4 Voters : 0 % YES, 100 % NO. Terrain / Finland

Coast south of Vaasa 1b (35,45) (Borger) : Become land hex with most of the hex being sea. 4 Voters : 0 % YES, 100 % NO. Terrain / Finland

I propose these two suggestions are removed too from the list. These were originally proposed by me under the circumstance that we could NOT change the European scaled map in Finland under any circumstance. But it seems we can do that and therefore the Coast south of Vaasa 2 is the preferred change to make and it's getting all the yes votes.

After comments from Ullern I think we have agreed to keep the glacier where it is and change the coast line instead so it doesn't have the east-west peninsula look into the sea. Look at the coast lines near Svartisen from the maps provided. If you change the coast lines it doesn't look like this is the Bodø hex. Well, this will be done better if Bodø is placed on the map as a port. Ullern proposes the forest hex just north of the glacier.

So I propose we remove this suggestion to move the glacier and focus on changing the coast line instead in the hex.

I made this suggestion under the condition that it was NOT possible to add lake Mjøsa to the map (because the European map scale should not be altered). For me it seemed strange that the unimportant lake Femunden would be added to be map while the biggest lake Mjøsa was omitted. But it seems we CAN make minor changes to the European map and it's proposed to add lake Mjøsa.

I therefore see no reason to remove lake Femunden so I propose we can remove this suggestion. It's true that Norway has more lakes than Finland, but on the MWIF map it would be very strange to see Norway without a single lake. So keep lake Femunden and hopefull add lake Mjøsa.

I also propose the following that after Froonp has revised the list by removing the 100% scores for implementation and the remove above suggestions I wrote about that we clear the votes for the remaining suggestions and people REVOTE for them. Hopefully we can get 6+ votes for each remaining suggestion on the list. I also have a feeling that some people may have changed their votes for some suggestions and hinting about it in their messages, but Froonp may not have seen it and changed the vote. It's now not possible to see who voted yes and who voted no. So a person can not correct a mistake if there was a mistake.

By simplifying the list to only contain the remaining ACTIVE suggestions on the list then I think a revote is the fastest way to do it. It will ensure that not "old" votes remain after we have discussed pros and cons for a suggestion. I don't think the list will be so very long so I think all of us contributing here should be able to cast their votes again.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets 1 - Tampere (35,47) (Borger) Yes, it seems incorrect that all the Finnish units have to arrive in Helsinki

I agree with you that it's quite important for Finland to have an alternative city to place reinforcements.

I also notice that Norway can only place reinforcements in Oslo, but that doesn't matter because Norway will usually be wiped out in the Spring of 1940 or remain neutral if Germany is not attacking. So there aren't many units that would need to arrive. But Finland is an active country for a long part of WW2 and would definitely have several units arriving as reinforcements.

With Tampere as a city then Finland can continue to fight even though Russia has engaged Helsinki and try to outflank it. It forces the Soviet player to send units in the direction of Tampere to prevent Finnish reinforcements to relieve Helsinki. I'm thinking now more on the end-game than the Winter War. During the Winter War I think Finland will agree to an armistice before seeing it's army destroyed and Helsinki captured.

quote:

3 - Turku (37,46) (Borger) Yes, but as minor port not as a city

I agree with this too. Especially if Tampere is introduced as a city. Then Turku can be a port only. Tampere can not be introduced as a port because it's not a coastal city.

I was thinking about the Finnish rail net. It doesn't go through the hex where Turku is located, but the real rail net is going through Turku. Should we therefore extend the rail line from Hanko to Turku?

that it's quite important for Finland to have an alternative city to place reinforcements.

I also notice that Norway can only place reinforcements in Oslo, but that doesn't matter because Norway will usually be wiped out in the Spring of 1940 or remain neutral if Germany is not attacking. So there aren't many units that would need to arrive. But Finland is an active country for a long part of WW2 and would definitely have several units arriving as reinforcements.

With Tampere as a city then Finland can continue to fight even though Russia has engaged Helsinki and try to outflank it. It forces the Soviet player to send units in the direction of Tampere to prevent Finnish reinforcements to relieve Helsinki. I'm thinking now more on the end-game than the Winter War. During the Winter War I think Finland will agree to an armistice before seeing it's army destroyed and Helsinki captured.

This will affect the game play quite a bit and Tammerfors is nowhere near the size required for a city on the map. There are other cities that are larger than Tammerfors was during WWII, I think that we should keep the 100.000 inhabitants rule, a hex containing a city means prohibiting Blitz and giving -1 on the die roll in addition to being a supply source and giving the opportunity to add reinforcements. So to keep the playbalance I would not want to add any cities to Finland.

I am gonne propose to correct the western part of Norway. The picture down below shows what I mean. The picture to the left is the current status of the map with Mjøsa, the picture to the right is my suggestion.

I would not want to add Mjösa and would like to remove Femunden as both those lake a very small. Neither the Swedish lake of Siljan nor Hjälmaren are represented on the map both of them are bigger than Mjösa and much bigger than femunden.

For comparision the lake of Vänern is more than 25 times the size of Femunden and more than 15 times the size of Mjösa.